
Research groups
The Global Development Institute is driven by the desire to advance social justice by conducting world-class, interdisciplinary research that achieves real impact.
Research at the Global Development Institute is focussed around our research groups. Within each group you’ll find our latest research projects, publications, activities as well as profiles of the academics involved.
Digital development
GDI has the specialist research of the Centre for Digital Development alongside research projects examining digital development issues.
Migration, refugees and asylum
The contemporary world is characterised by a high degree of mobility, making people on the move important political and developmental actors.
Global urban futures
Our research works to understand urban globalisation and its impacts.
Growth and distribution
We push forward the frontiers of research about the interactions of growth and distribution.
Politics, governance and management
Building more effective and inclusive institutions and political systems that are capable of delivering development.
Global production networks, trade and labour
The organisation of global production is undergoing significant evolution, under the influence of rising powers and more polycentric trade patterns and new technologies.
GDI research groups have some common themes. Understanding and addressing poverty and inequality remains a key focus; and we lead The University of Manchester’s Global Inequalities Research Beacon.
Many of our research projects address environmental and natural resource concerns; and many recognise (both directly and indirectly) the centrality of politics and power to development outcomes and engage with the imperatives of political change and policy and programme reform.
Finally our research groups are sensitive to the importance of context, recognising that while we live in a globalizing world, the impacts of globalization are varied, uneven and should not be taken for granted.
Beyond GDI, The University of Manchester itself provides a first class base for inter-disciplinary partnerships. We work closely with the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, the Manchester Urban Institute, the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, and with many individual academics within the University from Engineering, Geography, Education, Economics, Politics, and Medicine amongst others.